Facebook was again hauled before Congress this week, this time to answer for a set of stories published in the Wall Steet Journal saying the company has internal research showing its tools hurt kids -- Instagram exacerbates body image issues for teen girls, for example -- but it hasn't really done much about that.  So, what now? What next? Here to help untangle that is David Hoffman, professor at Duke University Sanford School of Public Policy -- he's a  cybersecurity expert.

Will a new Texas law require social media companies like Facebook and Twitter to host vaccine disinformation, or even hate speech? The law also makes it a crime to "de-boost" comments and other posts, forbidding firms from taking away algorithmic amplification that helps extreme posts go viral.  But are Facebook and Instagram users entitled to -- not just free speech, but also free reach? Duke University's Phil Napoli joins me for a Debugger in 10 discussion. 

You probably don't realize, or don't think about, the hundreds of small companies that attach themselves to name-brand websites like CNN.com which track you in the same way.  Then these billions of pieces of information about us is married to billions of dollars being spent trying to get our attention.  That idle Google search out anxiety medicine or sexual disfunction is auctioned off to the highest bidder, and shared with thousands of other firms, too. The result? A one-way mirror that not only intrudes on our most intimate thoughts but logs them forever, making them easy prey for murky data brokers and creepy hackers. For the rest of Internet time. That's what this podcast is about.  The Internet has a third-party problem -- a number of third-party problems, really -- and it's time we talked about them.

What do you do if you think your friend is bugging you? I don't mean bothering you. I mean...bugging you...using a device to listen to you, maybe even recording your conversations, when you visit their home. Well, that's the world most of us live in now. Personal assistants, many modern TVs, smart doorbells...they all incorporate listening devices. What if you don't want to be surveilled like that? Should you ask your friends to turn off their Alexa when you walk in the door?  Should they offer? In this episode of Debugger in 10, Bob Sullivan talks with Dr. Jolynn Dellinger, a privacy law professor at Duke University, where she is also a senior fellow at the Kenan Institute for Ethics.  Kenan and Duke's Sanford School of Public Policy bring you this podcast.

The Colonial Pipeline cyberattack got the attention of U.S. consumers when gasoline stations started running out of fuel, but the ransomware crisis has been festering for a long time. What steps did the White House take to stop, or at least slow down, ransomware gangs? In this mini-episode, host Bob Sullivan discusses an executive order signed by President Biden -- what it says, and what it's missing -- with Duke University Professor David Hoffman.  

The technologists who built the Internet were naive, and their failure of imagination led us all down a path to rampant fraud, abuse, and misinformation.  In part 2 of this episode, Jessica Rich, Ari Schwartz, and Tim Sparapani join me to discuss why things went so wrong.  

Is there an Original Sin of the Internet? The techlash is real: Did it have to be this way? In this launch episode of Debugger, Bob Sullivan talks with a set of researchers and technologists who were there at the beginning of the Digital Age and you'll hear: The Internet is in crisis. We could have fixed it long ago. It wasn't hard. We just failed.  In part 1, you'll hear from pioneers Richard Purcell, Bill Woodcock, and Jolynn Dellinger. 

"This is not the Internet I set out to build." Was there some...original sin of the Internet, a moment when we turned right as we should have turned left? Looking backward isn’t always worthwhile, but sometimes it is. In this episode of Debugger, Bob Sullivan talks with Richard Purcell, Bill Woodcock and Jolynn Dellinger about fundamental flaws designed into the Web that we're all paying dearly for now.   

What's the Original Sin of the Internet? Why is technology such a powerful tool for attacking democracy? How many data brokers stalk you every time you open a web page or use an app? And what can we do to domesticate the wild animal that is the Internet? These are the kinds of questions we'll be asking on Debugger, my new podcast -- brought to you by Duke Unversity's Sanford School of Public Policy and the Keenan Institute for Ethics.   

You're sick, and you pay for insurance, but you're still afraid to go to the doctor because of what it might cost. That's the reality for millions of Americans, suggests a new survey by Policygenius, an independent insurance marketplace and news site. Copays, deductibles, premiums...all these terms are still confusing to most Americans. This isn't some political football or a chance to score debate points. Health insurance illiteracy is a dangerous, potentially deadly problem in America. As open enrollment for many 2021 health insurance plans begins today, I speak with Hanna Horvath, a data analyst at Policygenius, about the risks of not understanding your own health insurance.